Scott and Renee Davis had lived with their lackluster kitchen for years. Scott had bought their 1909 bungalow in Seattle’s Roosevelt-Ravenna neighborhood in 1986, while he was still in college, and Renee moved in after they were married in 1991. But as the years passed, the couple’s growing family (they now have two daughters) and burgeoning interest in Arts & Crafts pottery sparked ideas for a kitchen overhaul.
“They needed a much more functional house to live in,” says designer Alexandra Gorny of WAI Gorny, who at the time lived near the Davises and assisted them in turning the space into a sunny, 1920s-inspired kitchen.
The first order of business: rearranging the layout to give the family more room to maneuver. An inconveniently placed fridge and island were impeding traffic flow, while cabinet and counter space was practically nonexistent. The island was scrapped, and, says Alexandra, “we swapped a door and a window to bring traffic straight through the kitchen. By doing that, we tripled the workspace.”